I procrastinated long enough. I need the box to put some of my to-be-read and to-be-given away books (via Bookmooch, if you’re still not into the hottest thing to hit the book swapping world). Hence I need file away my to-be-reviewed ones. I’ll be short and snappy – if I can’t deliver my reviews at a minute reading time, then I won’t deliver it at all.

Hey now, I think I like this new reviewing format! Do you agree with me? Or should I go back to the longer ones, the one book per review posts?

The Case of the Left Handed Lady: An Enola Holmes Mystery – Nancy Springer
Fiction, YA, Mystery, Adventure; ISBN 978-0-399-24517-6; Philomel Books, 2007

I like Enola Holmes, not just because she’s the sister of the celebrated Sherlock Holmes (of which I am a most devoted fan). She is one of the rare YA female protagonist that I like at all levels – she is resourceful, brave, intelligent and rational, yet have a tinge of vulnerability and loneliness – so much so that she reminds me of Katniss of The Hunger Games. Though the story itself is weak (both shaky in terms of logic & believability), the characters makes up for this shortcoming. You must also remember that this is just the second book of what seems to be a long and promising YA series. I suggest you read this one instead of watching that dreadful Sherlock Holmes movie. 4 out of 5 stars.

ShrinkLits: Seventy of the world’s towering classics cut down to size – Maurice Sagoff
Reference, Poetry; ISBN 0-89480-079-5; Workman Publishing, 1980

There are a lot of books out there that do this kind of thing: cutting up books into perhaps a paragraph or two of the bare essentials. What I like about this one is that it pushes the envelope further – Maurice Sagoff trims down them hefty classics into bite-size rhyming poems. How exact to the original text are these concise poetry? Not so much. How high is the enjoyment factor? Very high indeed. 5 out of 5 stars. A warning though: if you are a literary purist, don’t read this book.

Jane Austen: A Life - Carol Shields
Non-fiction, Biography; ISBN 0-14-303516-9; Penguin Books, 2001

Carol Shields is an Austenite and it shows. Warmth, empathy and frankness permeate in her short discourse of Austen and her work that you can’t help but agree with the novelist’s (Austen, I mean) exclamation, “If a book is well written, I always find it too short”. I quite agree. 5 out of 5 stars. One of the best biographies I ever read. If you can help it, I suggest reading the main six works before reading this one.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – Seth Grahame-Smith (even if it says so on the cover, I refuse to add Jane Austen as an author to this mockery of a novel!)
Fiction, Horror; ISBN 978-1-59474-334-4; Quirk Books, 2009

Wow, this chick Jane Austen is so in nowadays. Look at these, all her sh- being relabeled as the original “chick-lit” novels, didn't know these chicklit sh- are *that* old. Too bad there’s a lot of boring stuff in here, like balls and parties and people making funny looks at each other. Bleeaach! Now, here’s an idea! Since this chick Jane Austen is a hot item commodity, why not sell our own version but one with zombies and killer ninjas and shaolin masters and pentagrams of death… * six weeks later* Dude, this writing thing sucks! So maybe I’ll just make an exact copy of this chick’s book then cut out all the crappy boring stuff then insert the cool stuff! Yeah, that’s the thing! They’ll be making a movie out of this sh-, I’m sure. I’m going to be famous and filthy rich! Yeah! Ride on!
Do I need to put stars on this one?

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Dark Water – Koji Suzuki
Fiction, Horror; ISBN 10932234-10-1; Vertical, New York: 2004 (originally published in Japan as Honogurai mizu no soko kara, Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo: 1996).

Water as the harbinger of both life and death – that is the most obvious theme of this anthology of horror stories. In “Floating Water” (of which the movie Dark Water is based) a mother and daughter were beset by a specter of a lonely drowned little girl; “Solitary Isle” tells of a creature lurking in a seemingly pristine island; “The Hold” is a chilling tale of revenge served by a dead wife to her fisherman husband; “Dream Cruise” is a tale of a yacht crew being held hostage by a ghost; “Adrift” is a mind-bending story of a ghost ship; “Watercolors” is about the strange happenings in the toilet of an abandoned discotheque; “Forest under the Sea” is about an explorer that had discovered a mysterious cave that flows beside and under a river; and finally, the “Prologue” and “Epilogue” is cumulatively a story that ties in with the aftermath of what happened in “Forest under the Sea”.

Beneath the apparent premise, there are more subtle ones. All of the stories tackle the familial: of the complicated (regenerative and destructive) relationship of parents to children and vise versa, of the different and similarities despite generation gaps, of what it takes to be a family or be included in one in modern Japan (revolving around the Tokyo Prefecture; this specific placing is important to the third theme of the anthology which is the moral and physical decay of the city vis a vis with the cleansing power of nature). This inter-meshing of different layers within seemingly simple stories is what made the book profoundly mesmerizing and ultimately enjoyable.

This was the book I chose for the March reading discussion, where my book club talked about Japanese literature. I’m glad that I picked this as my book, since it made me think about what makes a Japanese story or novel, well, Japanese. Horror is certainly an intriguing genre, as almost everyone I know is exposed to the Western side of the idea: from Stephen King, Anne Rice, or the more classical Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe, to name a few. But it seems that the Japanese had been dealing with the unknown and the paranormal for centuries, and it shows. To accept supernatural beings as casually as meeting another person, without reaching to far-fetched logical explanations, and even to accept premonitions and gut feelings (familiar to us as paramdam and kutob) is not just Japanese but is also inherently Asian.

But to tell you the truth, Dark Water doesn't belong to the horror genre at all. The horror is in the people of the story, rather than on any supernatural being. The anthology gives the reader glimpses of the darkness inherent in the human being, and that is what ultimately gives this book its eeriness. Many horror fans would be turned off by this; it might be boring to those who are expecting the usual fare from this author (considering that many of the now-famous Japanese horror flicks – The Ring is the best example – are based on his stories, I wouldn’t be surprised at that too). Personally, it is refreshing to read something creepy without the blood, gore and all the mess. And I do hope I won't be the only one.

5 out of 5

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Cirque du Freak: A Living Nightmare (Book 1) – Darren Shan
Fiction, Horror, Children; ISBN 0-316-90571-2; Little Brown, 2000.

Most boys of any age like the icky the bloody, and the gross – and Darren Shan would know that all too well, or he wouldn’t had wrote this long novel of 13 parts.

Now you might think that I didn’t like the book; I did. The book was fun and simple (too simple in the first few chapters that it almost had that talking-down tone that many children’s book fall on all too often). Despite the easy wording, the action was fast-paced, the characterizations are satisfying, and the macabre (but not too much) details are mesmerizing. The protagonist, Darren Shan is a boy that any kid of the same age can very well relate to and sympathize with.

This is just the prep of the long “Saga of Darren Shan”, and it shows. I have nothing against multi-book serials; just as long as each part is satisfying by itself – needless to say, this one failed me. The bare story should had been fleshed out, or better yet, the first three books should had been combined (of course, the publishers won’t do that; any savvy book marketer would be horrified to waste profit).

I did hear that the saga gets better along the way. I don’t doubt that – I’m sure I’m going to enjoy books 2 to 13 too. But everything had the aura of being too calculated, like anything less than fun is going to be harmful to the revenues. This is, after all, a budding franchise which, by the looks of the things – including the upcoming movie and the increasing number of fans, both young and old – wouldn’t be waning any time soon.

3 out of 5 stars

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Coraline – Neil Gaiman
Fiction, Fantasy, Young Adults / Children; ISBN 0-380-80734-3; HarperTrophy, 2003.

Let’s face it. Neil Gaiman is a darn good storyteller and the people to complain that his awards were the results of just being popular clearly don’t know what they are talking about. But I have to be honest here – despite being a fan, I only know him for his graphic novels, with the large bulk from his multi-awarded Sandman series, and a smattering of his Marvel projects. This is my first time reading a pure text-based Gaiman work.

And I simply loved it. While it is obviously a children’s book, anyone who can read and love fantasy and all its trappings – quirky characters, wonderland settings and curveball-kind of plot turns – would surely be swept away. It is deliciously creepy to adults, and I imagine it to be scarier to the kids. But it never patronizes the young readers, like many YA and children’s books tend to do. It also doesn’t insult their intelligence and capability to handle strange and/or frightening story twists.

Many of the acclaims and blurb compared Coraline to the Narnia series and Alice in the Wonderland, of which Gaiman obviously borrowed heavily from (Hidden doors? Passageway to another world? Talking cat? A lost girl?). If the story isn't original, what made it a good read then? Well, to answer myself, Gaiman's cleverness springs from hpw he weaves these familiar threads into something that looks inventively new, even if it’s really is not. He is simply a very decent writer who knows how to control and discipline his work into a finely-tuned novel.

I really shouldn’t end this review without saying anything about Dave McKean. McKean and Gaiman had been working together since the Sandman days, and the comfortable relationship between the two shows in their output. While I don’t know the first thing about giving critiques on illustrations, I do like McKean’s quirky and messy style, which compliments Gaiman’s weird story.

Give this book all the stars that you can dole out – it deserves every last one.

Should be given more than 5 out of 5

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